Really very good lessons! Understandable and easy. Thank you very much, Codersguru!
I have a dream to make indicators for all Jap. candles, f.ex. "morning star" et.c. for buy and sell. If they work, why not to write indicators for them?
Maybe somebody already did that? I would be very very thankful if share with me..

Hi codersguru,

It is quite nice of you to put an effort and write all the lessons for all those who need extra the push to move forward. Here is my feedback on the subject of bars.

Following your explanation about the bars in ‘Bars.pdf’, I have checked time of many consecutive bars on M1 USDCAD chart. So far I was under the impression, that no matter what market is doing, I am going to see a bar every minute interval. I was expecting to see few consecutive bars with Open=High=Low=Close (taken from previous minute Close) and Vol=0 during slow (no ticks) market.

I was surprised that, bars are not evenly spaced in one minute intervals. It looks like the time difference between two consecutive bars is random and always longer than one minute.

I went through all the buttons in the application (MetaTrader) looking for some settings relevant to this phenomenon. I did not find anything that can influence time between the bars other than ‘Periodicity’ settings. Given the above, I wonder how one can evaluate charts where time scale in randomized.

Can you, please, comment on this phenomenon?

FX4EVER

Thank u all, this real great work

Techguy and codersguru,

After reading all this bar count stuff, me braaain 'urrts!!!

I have noticed very few mq4 files bother to use the IndicatorCounted() function. They use the Bars function instead, since one knows the number generated by Bars is the same as the number generated by IndicatorCounted() -1.

The phrase that caught my eye was "it is a big waste of time and effort for the program to recount the Bar array index every time the int Start () function is executed because a new quote has been received". What is actually going on with the workings of IndicatorCounted()? Does it count all the bars (except the current bar) only once when attached to the chart, then thereafter just increments the count immediately after each new bar is formed? Perhaps this should be clarified in the document.

What are some rules and guidelines for when to apply each of these functions assuming one is aware that they differ in value by one bar?

Similarly, while we are on the subject of coding efficency, it seems to me that many indicators only need to be drawn once, and may only need to be updated once a day or maybe once per bar (e.g. some pivot point programs).

What are some techniques for periodically updating the drawing of an object rather than updating it every tick? Can periodic updating also be applied to lines drawn with arrays?

Thank you both for efforts and contributions on this site.

WRR

thanks for you all, Coderguru & techguy,

finally i know where i must started

Some good information. Can someone post all the functions available to EXCEL?

is there a way to calculate how much time is left in the formation of the current bar ?

for example.... 5 min chart

I know that i want to enter a position on the next bar if it reaches a certian price.

it that bar hit the target price within the first 30 seconds of opening, i know that there is a good probibilaty that I will be able to enter my position at an even better price.

How can I put some sort of countdown on the current bar formation?

I believe I saw some code in MQL4 Articles: automated forex trading, strategy tester, expert advisors and custom indicatorsIt compared the date of the current bar vs date of a previous one to compute time remaining.

int nextBar=Time[0]+Period()*60;
int secondsRemaining=nextBar-CurTime(); // negative values are possible